The Rules of Engagement
Chapter Four
So Long As I Am Spoken Of
His smooth fingers flicked to one of the knives, pulling it out of its sheath. In the harsh white light, America could see herself reflected in the meticulously clean blade. Her hair was half up, half down, and completely tangled, and her face was smudged with something the color of moss, like she had run her skin against mold. Before she could see much more, he pressed the blade under her chin. She flinched away instinctively from the sharp point, but there was nowhere to go.
Her heart fluttered again desperately, sending a film of terror across every nerve in her body. The feral grin never wavered as the man used his knife to tip her chin up, then slid it down so it rested above her artery. America had never been more aware of the thin layer of skin separating it from her blood, blood that would pour out in great spurts to match her terrified heart if the knife slipped even a millimeter. Inexorably, no matter how much she tried to move away, it felt like she was drawn closer to the blade, like it and she were the opposite sides of a magnet.
"See, Princess, she don't deal well with liars," he hissed. His hand twitched and America couldn't help herself. She twisted away violently, as far as she could while tied to a wall, and let out a small scream as the blade nicked through her skin. At that moment, she hated him with every fiber in her being. If only she could have gotten up and run him through with the same knife as a bead of blood trickled down her skin, hot and cold at the same time as waves of terror rolled over her, breaking into bolts of lightning that shattered her vision.
"You have something that we want."
"Sorry, sanity is non-transferable," she snapped, the slice on her skin burning like acid as her heartbeat sped ever faster.
"Clever girl. Just a little, tiny girl," he said, leaning away from her defiance. His knife disappeared into his ragged coat and he stepped back, straightening with an air of absolute power. His expression gave nothing away, not that she had a spare brain cell to notice, each and every one consumed with the idea of escape.
She stared at him, determined. If one sentence could remove the knife from her throat, maybe she could give herself a little more power. Memory or no, America didn't want this man to be in control of her.
He spun and paced across the floor dramatically, making a sharp turn on his heel at the wall of the cell. With hands clasped behind his back like a soldier or politician, he looked incredibly formal, even in rags. He looked like someone she knew. A name burbled in her mind, just out of reach, and before she could make a wild grab his voice shattered her concentration.
"I lost everything to you, you and your true love, the murderer he is. But you wouldn't care. You would never care. Everything I've lost has just made your life easier. And we all know how much your type hates work." Low and hard, his voice brought goosebumps to her arms. "Gold digger," he snapped.
Her head started spinning again, but not from the drugs this time. Tendrils of memories formed before being whisked away again. It was like watching a storm about to break, hearing the thunder but never seeing the lightning.
"I don't have anyone," said America, defiant. "It's just me, myself, and I." She couldn't help but shrink a little inside at the rage on his face. Combined with the dagger and the blood trailing down her throat, it was enough for her to want to curl into herself and cry. But she was determined to appear relatively unafraid.
If she could.
The bright glow of the electric lights was gone a few hours later. Sitting in the damp, dark cell, America had nothing. No plan, no dream, not even the tiniest prayer for escape. Even if she did, without her memory she would have absolutely nothing to rely on. She had exactly one memory- her name- and one thing, a freezing dress that was about as useful for keeping warm as a tissue. When the man left, he had attached her chain to a bar above her head, forcing all the blood out of her arms. The blank tingling of a limb falling asleep had quickly spread to her shoulders and her muscles felt like gelatin. But if she relaxed into the chains, the hard, sharp edge of the manacles would shred her skin.
She was in an impossible position, in more ways than one.
America tipped her head back, pushing aside the headache as she leaned against the damp stones. Her pulse was throbbing in her throat, reminding her all too much of a gleaming knife and the acrid smell that had accompanied the man who wielded it.
The dank cell was almost perfectly bare. She'd had very little time to study it between her pounding head and interrogation, not that there was much to study. Her dress spread over the ground like the night sky, leaving her with the vague impression of a memory. Something with hundreds of voices and emotions, but nothing more.
She resisted the urge to slam her head against the wall as the thought slipped away. All she wanted was something to hang on to, something to grasp here in this prison full of men with knives and terrible breath and chains and iron bars. Something happy, something to use as a shield. But as she wracked her brain, the best she could come up with was something that felt like childhood, a little boy with dark hair and ragged clothes in a treehouse, and the little girl- herself, America realized- following his orders as they played. The boy smiled and shouted something, standing on the wooden floor with his feet braced wide, hands on a pretend wheel that was steering itself to nowhere. He ran his hands around the edge of his wheel and they both leaned sideways, pretending to fall over in the midst of a storm, rolling around on the wooden planks and giggling like nothing was funnier in the whole world. And perhaps to those two little children, nothing was. They got back up and continued their game, dodging the reaching arms of a giant sea monster, being swept out down the ladder and onto a messy lawn by a rogue wave before climbing back aboard their little ship, setting it to right and spinning wildly.
But suddenly the memory turned from childhood fantasy to a nightmare, the grass beneath the tree becoming black waves and the treehouse a little raft, sinking in a wild storm.
And America watched as the two little children drowned in a storm of their own making.
When America returned from the world of drowning children to freezing cells, it was with a bang. One of her jailors slammed open the door and her ears rang as the noise of steel on steel echoed around the small chamber. Two men hurried in, releasing her arms from the manacles but cuffing her wrists as soon as they reached her lap. she sighed in momentary relief as blood raced down her arms, but soon the tingles of the muscles reawakening turned to painful shudders as her fingers involuntarily clenched into fists.
"Move," grunted the first, roughly shoving her with a foot. He looked as if he was half dead, his lips tinted blue-purple against pale skin and pale hair and clothes that must once have been pale but at that moment were grimy and gray. His skinny foot barely moved her body and so she made her best attempt to scoot sideways appropriately until she was pressed into a corner. The gems on the blue fabric she wore were scattered across the floor where she had been sitting, glittering in the light. They leant the space a cheerful gleam, something America believed it was sorely lacking.
But, she quickly realized, she did not have much room to complain when she saw the pitiful form being dragged down the short hall.
A young woman, dressed in a thin shirt and shorts like she had been sleeping, was being tugged along roughly by two men. Her hair was lank around her face and she looked as if she'd been crying. America's heart instantly went out to her. At least she had a bit of extra fabric in her dress, but the prisoner being taken nearer and nearer had practically nothing. She shivered horribly, her eyes wide and arms clutched as close to her body as she could manage with the handcuffs. The sound of three sets of footsteps echoed angrily down the hall, two heavy and booming and the third, the woman's, America knew, much softer and uneven. As she came closer, her eyes met America's and her head snapped up. Her mouth widened into an 'O' as she let out a little gasp, sounding like she had just barely stopped herself before speaking.
The man that had shoved her gave her one last kick in the ribs before he and the second man in her cell took hold of the new girl, locking their hands around her upper arms. They practically threw her across the room and she landed in an undignified heap nearly atop America. Even before the girl had sat up, the men had disappeared, shutting the door with a clang. America could hear the lock click into place and the low murmur of fading voices before she turned her attention elsewhere.
The girl at her side still had a comically shocked expression on her face. Despite her appearance, she smelled sweet, like peaches and some sort of flower, and America realized now that she was closer that her hair was soaking wet, not greasy, and she was quite clean.
"Hello," she said quietly after the girl had managed to prop herself against the wall, cuffed hands in her lap and her legs tucked close to her.
"America!" whispered the girl, breaking into a smile. America stared at the girl for a second, wondering, if in the dim lighting, she had missed something. After all, she recalled nothing of this girl, sitting in front of her and looking delighted.
For another moment, she waited, utterly confounded. "I'm sorry…" she started. "But-"
The girl's face had fallen and she leaned away from America, mirroring the pose she had adopted with her head tipped back against the wall.
"I'm not sure why I expected you to remember me. You probably have bigger problems now," she sighed. "Anyway, for what it's worth, I'm Samantha Lowell? From Sonage?" America shook her head apologetically.
"I'm afraid I don't recall," she said, voice dropping even lower as she cast her eyes past the other girl's and towards the floor. But they both knew it was a question more than anything.
Who are you? Why are we here?
The girl- Samantha- brought back nothing but a bright, hot glow, like studio lights-
"Studio!" America blurted suddenly.
Samantha immediately brightened, despite their circumstances. "Yes- I did hope you'd remember me, you were always kind during the Selection, even though we all knew-"
America winced. She hated to crush this girl- Samantha- 's hopes, but she certainly couldn't remember ever interacting with her.
"I don't remember anything. What's the Selection?" she said. The only thing she remembered being Selected for was, apparently, being locked in a dim, dark cell. Samantha's mouth dropped open, forming another perfect little 'O'.
"Is this all a joke or something?" Her voice rose in pitch, even though it was the same nervous whisper. "Did you kidnap me to play some elaborate practical joke, America? Is this your idea of fun?"
America's face hardened as she faced the other girl, before she let out a deep breath of defeat. "No! I have no idea who I am, let alone what my own sense of humor is! I'm wearing some pretty dress while lounging around on the floor, in chains, and occasionally being stabbed in the throat by some psychopath!"
Samantha was silent at this, and the quiet dropped, foglike, over their little cell. It was an unnerving silence, the sort of quiet where no one quite knows what to do, and it continued for a fair while. America dutifully studied a very uninteresting crack in the floor.
Eventually, their mutual shocked silence became deeper, as Samantha shivered against the wall and America shivered for her own reasons, none of which had to do with the temperature.
9/7/16
Coming Soon: You'll Know... Soon
Actually Coming Soon: Maxon, perhaps.
-Dreams